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Spill the secret
To join the debate, visit newscientist.com/letters
Seagrass solution From Glyn Williams Might one way to protect threatened seagrass meadows (26 May, p 16) be to encourage commercial farming of them? Seagrass is used in artisan crafts, most familiarly twisted into cords to be woven into chair seats. It could be used in other, similar crafts, and its long fibres should make it a good substitute for materials such as jute for making sacking and tote bags. Presumably it could also be used as a biomass fuel. Applications of this nature would free up land for food crops. Derby, UK
contrary to the convention by states party to it, shall be illicit. The US is party to the convention. New York, US
Transporting energy
From Anthony Battersby I read with interest Peter Aldhous’s article on using spare energy from phone masts to power vaccine storage, in which he attributed to me the concern that hi-tech refrigerators might fail (26 May, p 22). This possibility should not be overlooked, but the more important point is that it is better to move the energy to the vaccine rather than the other way round. What I found in my study in Kenya was that only 2.6 per cent of Fossil feud masts are within 1 kilometre of a From Ann Altman health facility, as the criteria used Further to the row over the in deciding the location of each legality of auctioning a dinosaur are very different. It is better to skeleton in the US (26 May, p 4), “harvest” the energy from the one international convention of mast in the form of ice and take it no small import is the 1970 to where it is to be used. UNESCO Convention on the I saw one site where vaccine Means of Prohibiting and was stored at a phone mast Preventing the Illicit Import, 1.7 kilometres from the clinic, but Export and Transfer of Ownership the refrigerator contained only of Cultural Property. spoilt vaccine because it was not It states that “cultural property” convenient. Health workers is that which, on religious or preferred to keep vaccine in the secular grounds, is specifically clinic, using an expensive gasdesignated by a state as being powered refrigerator. important for archaeology, Tellisford, Somerset, UK prehistory, history, literature, art or science. It includes objects of palaeontological interest as one Modern morality of the categories. From Ullrich Fischer The convention adds that the I don’t think morality has much to import, export or transfer of do with disgust, as suggested in ownership of cultural property your look at opposition to gay marriage (19 May, p 28). Disgust probably evolved from the advantage gained from avoiding sources of disease and toxins. Morality probably evolved by group selection, which gave a survival advantage to groups of pre-humans who were able to avoid killing each other and focus instead on murdering competing tribes and other pre-human species. Modern morality
probably evolved as an extension of this, to allow us to live in groups of unlimited size and largely made up of unrelated individuals. As far as most of us are concerned – liberal and conservative alike, I suspect – the most important moral precepts are to avoid harming fellow humans and render aid to those in trouble. Everything else is either faith-based nonsense or an elaboration of these basic ideas. Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Booze cruisers
From Paul Bennett I can bear witness to your report on drunken waxwings (2 June, p 17). Where I live, every year in late winter, when food is scarce, Bohemian waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) fall out of trees. These birds flock in groups of 500 or more and cruise the city in search of fruit on crab apple and mountain ash trees. The fruit is invariably fermented by late winter. It is comical to see hundreds of staggering birds. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Spill the secret From Alan Thurley I would like to suggest an alternative approach to the search for Starlite’s formula (12 May, p 40). It seems to me that listing the ingredients easily available to inventor Maurice Ward in the five to 10 years before his appearance on the TV show Tomorrrow’s
World in March 1990 is essential. I would guess he found this novel heat-resistant material accidentally, perhaps after a spillage, when the simplest way to dispose of a small mess is to wipe it up and throw the rag on an open fire. Suppose it wouldn’t burn? Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK
In the dark? From Malcolm Shute There is a possibility that you do not consider in your report on suggestions that our cosmic neighbourhood may be dark matter-free (28 April, p 6). If most matter is in fact dark matter, organisms on Earth must be able to tolerate it continually passing through their bodies, and hence it must be made up of something such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Alternatively, by allowing the weak anthropic principle, such matter is not so benign. Maybe life, or evolution, on Earth cannot tolerate it, and we are just very lucky to be living in an extremely rare low-density region. La Tour d’Aigues, France The editor writes: n An interesting idea. The suggestion that our neck of the galaxy is dark matter-free is hotly disputed (2 June, p 7).
For the record n In our look at creativity (26 May, p 37), we should have said that a majority of mathematicians have a single-digit Erdös number. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
16 June 2012 | NewScientist | 33
Seagrass solution From Glyn Williams Might one way to protect threatened seagrass meadows (26 May, p 16) be to encourage commercial farming of them? Seagrass is used in artisan crafts, most familiarly twisted into cords to be woven into chair seats. It could be used in other, similar crafts, and its long fibres should make it a good substitute for materials such as jute for making sacking and tote bags. Presumably it could also be used as a biomass fuel. Applications of this nature would free up land for food crops. Derby, UK
contrary to the convention by states party to it, shall be illicit. The US is party to the convention. New York, US
Transporting energy
From Anthony Battersby I read with interest Peter Aldhous’s article on using spare energy from phone masts to power vaccine storage, in which he attributed to me the concern that hi-tech refrigerators might fail (26 May, p 22). This possibility should not be overlooked, but the more important point is that it is better to move the energy to the vaccine rather than the other way round. What I found in my study in Kenya was that only 2.6 per cent of Fossil feud masts are within 1 kilometre of a From Ann Altman health facility, as the criteria used Further to the row over the in deciding the location of each legality of auctioning a dinosaur are very different. It is better to skeleton in the US (26 May, p 4), “harvest” the energy from the one international convention of mast in the form of ice and take it no small import is the 1970 to where it is to be used. UNESCO Convention on the I saw one site where vaccine Means of Prohibiting and was stored at a phone mast Preventing the Illicit Import, 1.7 kilometres from the clinic, but Export and Transfer of Ownership the refrigerator contained only of Cultural Property. spoilt vaccine because it was not It states that “cultural property” convenient. Health workers is that which, on religious or preferred to keep vaccine in the secular grounds, is specifically clinic, using an expensive gasdesignated by a state as being powered refrigerator. important for archaeology, Tellisford, Somerset, UK prehistory, history, literature, art or science. It includes objects of palaeontological interest as one Modern morality of the categories. From Ullrich Fischer The convention adds that the I don’t think morality has much to import, export or transfer of do with disgust, as suggested in ownership of cultural property your look at opposition to gay marriage (19 May, p 28). Disgust probably evolved from the advantage gained from avoiding sources of disease and toxins. Morality probably evolved by group selection, which gave a survival advantage to groups of pre-humans who were able to avoid killing each other and focus instead on murdering competing tribes and other pre-human species. Modern morality
probably evolved as an extension of this, to allow us to live in groups of unlimited size and largely made up of unrelated individuals. As far as most of us are concerned – liberal and conservative alike, I suspect – the most important moral precepts are to avoid harming fellow humans and render aid to those in trouble. Everything else is either faith-based nonsense or an elaboration of these basic ideas. Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Booze cruisers
From Paul Bennett I can bear witness to your report on drunken waxwings (2 June, p 17). Where I live, every year in late winter, when food is scarce, Bohemian waxwings (Bombycilla garrulus) fall out of trees. These birds flock in groups of 500 or more and cruise the city in search of fruit on crab apple and mountain ash trees. The fruit is invariably fermented by late winter. It is comical to see hundreds of staggering birds. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Spill the secret From Alan Thurley I would like to suggest an alternative approach to the search for Starlite’s formula (12 May, p 40). It seems to me that listing the ingredients easily available to inventor Maurice Ward in the five to 10 years before his appearance on the TV show Tomorrrow’s
World in March 1990 is essential. I would guess he found this novel heat-resistant material accidentally, perhaps after a spillage, when the simplest way to dispose of a small mess is to wipe it up and throw the rag on an open fire. Suppose it wouldn’t burn? Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK
In the dark? From Malcolm Shute There is a possibility that you do not consider in your report on suggestions that our cosmic neighbourhood may be dark matter-free (28 April, p 6). If most matter is in fact dark matter, organisms on Earth must be able to tolerate it continually passing through their bodies, and hence it must be made up of something such as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Alternatively, by allowing the weak anthropic principle, such matter is not so benign. Maybe life, or evolution, on Earth cannot tolerate it, and we are just very lucky to be living in an extremely rare low-density region. La Tour d’Aigues, France The editor writes: n An interesting idea. The suggestion that our neck of the galaxy is dark matter-free is hotly disputed (2 June, p 7).
For the record n In our look at creativity (26 May, p 37), we should have said that a majority of mathematicians have a single-digit Erdös number. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
16 June 2012 | NewScientist | 33